In order to recover crude oil from offshore installations, large investments are required. The largest, simplest and/or most productive petroleum reservoirs therefore are most profitable to develop and produce. Many smaller, more complex and/or less productive reservoirs, however, are considered to be marginal, inasmuch as they are economically unattractive, and they therefore remain untouched. This is unfortunate.
When assessing the economic viability of a hydrocarbon reservoir, many factors are considered, including prior art available for development and recovery of the petroleum resource. Many marginal reservoirs are considered insufficiently cost-effective due to prior art techniques providing inadequate performance and/or poor technical efficiency and/or an unacceptable technical extent. Innovations in such technical fields, however, may open for profitable recovery of such marginal hydrocarbon reservoirs, but they may also increase the recovery factor and the profitability of existing production facilities.